On reason I didn't want to have us read that (apart from it being an older text--1896--than I wanted and being written by a man) is that I listened to this "Philosophy Bites" podcast episode featuring British philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards, who wrote The Skeptical Feminist: A Philosophical Enquiry.Richards does a great job on the episode in succinctly giving Mill's point, which is surprisingly prescient of the issue re. human nature we ran into in our discussion: given the historical subjection of women and what that's done to our culture, we can't know know the degree to which measured differences in outlook and behavior (such as those cited by Gilligan) are biological or are a matter of social conditioning. His solution is to remove the legal restrictions ("protections" in the eyes of the men of the time) on women and just let them compete. In other words, be gender-blind. This, too, well captures what's perhaps a majority male response in the West today.

It's not Gilligan's response, though: for her, we don't need gender blindness (or to adapt the metaphor to her language, deafness), but exactly the opposite. What does this mean? We Americans (or is it just men?), I think, are very quick to ask for the pragmatic bottom line and want to ignore/simplify whatever remains of the issue beyond that implication for our practice. This isn't a matter of simply figuring out appropriate legislation (should there be gender-specific protections/affirmative action in hiring, sexual harassment laws, etc.?) or deciding who's to blame or who to be annoyed at, but a matter of achieving a better understanding of the human condition, i.e. what philosophy is supposed to do. "The thought of women, absent men" as Azzurra described it at the outset of our discussion seems an interesting thought experiment in that regard, even if I think that the speculative conclusions Gilman arrived at are pretty bullshitty.

There are, of course, practical applications to such understanding, as there is to all psychological insight. One that I've been hearing a lot about recently (my wife just started a public policy master's program specializing in domestic violence) is trying to figure out why women of all economic classes are abused with such frequency. This is not, goes the claim, just a matter of individual men being aggressive assholes (though it is that), but a matter of a cultural history where women have been subjugated: not treated as full members of the moral community, as property, as "the Other" to the male protagonists from whose point of view history is written. Again, there's some self-reflection involved for us men here (How do sexual differences in libido affect dynamics in our relationships? Does the woman in the relationship inevitably end up doing more work around the house even if both parties work full time?), but this is mostly a matter, I think, of sociological study, and the implications of a sociological theory aren't necessarily going to be obvious or direct. If you react to the whole enterprise as a crass political attack on you as a male, you're missing the point.

Comments

My wife is a historian, and has made the argument (to me, not professionally) that most of the ‘equality’ catchup empowerment that women have had since the sixties has been by virtue of capitalist ethic seeking to broaden the base of employment in the economy, rather than a real rebalance of society to promote the wellbeing of women. This is good where women’s interests align with those of capital – economic independence seems a straightforward good. But as she sees pornography and other sex-work as a sign that things have gone pretty badly wrong for the women involved (and the men too), this economic existence = existence equation is suspect.

For myself, I think a Heideggerian ‘always already’ reading of maleness and femaleness (and orientation), and how they can be taken up in infinitely varying social practices is the truth, but it doesn’t give you a clear, simple ideal to work toward. If everything needs to be defined in terms of everything else, its difficult to progress in the realm of theory. Perhaps trying to include ‘interesting’ in one’s (One’s) stereotypes would be a step toward more authentic practices of relationship.

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